Lies and deceit vs. facts and reality

Editor:

After Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi, Lebanese news site Tayyar.org reproduced an Agence France Presse (AFP) account of the attack and included a paragraph stating that Ambassador Stevens had been raped and killed by gunmen and his body has been dragged through the streets.

AFP said in response to the Tayyar report, "Concerning your query on the report published by a Lebanese website according to which ambassador Stevens was sodomized. That report falsely quoted our news agency and has no truth whatsover to it. AFP promptly sent a strongly worded complaint to that website and they removed the report and published a denial, saying that AFP did not report such a thing."

A Libyan doctor who treated Stevens said he died of severe asphyxiation, apparently from smoke. Stevens was brought alone by Libyans to the Benghazi Medical Center with no other Americans, and no one at the facility knew who he was, the doctor, Ziad Abu Zeid, told The Associated Press. Stevens was practically dead when he arrived close to 1 a.m., but "we tried to revive him for an hour and a half but with no success." The ambassador had bleeding in his stomach because of the asphyxiation but no other injuries, he said.

CNN obtained a video which, contrary to accounts that Stevens was murdered by the attackers, is said to show a group of Libyans attempting to rescue a still-alive Stevens from the burned-out consulate building:

The circumstances of Stevens' death are still under investigation:

The FBI has now opened an inquiry into the attack and the circumstances of the deaths of the three who were killed. "We are not clear on the circumstances between the time when [the ambassador] got separated from the rest of the group inside the burning building to the time that we were notified that he was in a Benghazi hospital," [a U.S.] official said. An autopsy will now be carried out.

Lies and deceit make me sick, but at the end of the day, facts and reality make me sleep peacefully every night.